Couldn't Keep Him There
by Mad Maudlin
Summary: I just need more time.I don't have any more to give you.


Keep Him There  
by Mad Maudlin

The slim, red-headed woman appeared on a street corner in a ghost town. She peered at a violently twisted street sign, then began to walk east, navigating the margin between filthy cars rusting on the street and the heaps of garbage, derelict appliances, and molding sheet rock that choked the side walk. The houses and businesses she passed were silent, slumped away from the street with water marks and spray paint crawling their candy-colored walls. A musty odor seeped from the buildings around her, and the though flitted through her mind that this was precisely the place to find him now. It looked like a war zone and felt like an outer circle of Hell. The season was spring, and the city was New Orleans.

She walked another block before signs of life began to emerge from the damaged homes around her. The sound of hammers here, a radio there; men with white respirator masks covering their faces dumped piles of torn sheet rock and fluffy pink insulation onto the curb. She saw a clutch of teenagers in head-to-toe suits made of blue plastic, guzzling bottled water in the shadow of a half-gutted duplex, and two women sorting through piles and boxes in their yard, the spoiled remnants of their lives. The red-headed woman eventually came to a stop before a house of salmon-colored stucco, the front wall blazoned with the usual orange cross. Like many houses on the block, a truck was parted in front of it, but unlike most, the truck was clean and had all of its tires.

A group of men stood on the porch, struggling to move a teetering refrigerator down the crumbling front steps. The doors of the fridge were bound with thick silver tape, but its contents thumped and sloshed ominously, and foul-smelling water the color of tea leaked from one corner every time it tilted. The men looked nearly identical, every face shielded by goggles and a respirator, most heads covered by bandanas or caps, every part of them gray with plaster dust. The woman watched them as they manhandled the refrigerator down to the curb and let it crash into its side in the dying grass.

"Make sure it's not crossing the property lines or they won't pick it up," one of the men called through his mask, and he pulled up his goggles to wipe sweat from his forehead. In his restored peripheral vision he saw the woman watching them from the street. "Can we help you, ma'am?" he called out.

She stepped forward, shading her eyes a bit. "I'm looking for Harry Potter."

Some of the men had already gone inside; most of the others didn't hear her. The ones who did, however, all looked as one to another dust-covered figure who had just placed one grimy glove on the doorknob. He looked like all the others, anonymous in his goggles and a black baseball cap, but when he turned around to face the woman in the street she recognized him immediately.

"Friend of yours?" the first man asked him.

Harry nodded. "Just give me a minute," he said without removing his respirator.

"Sure."

Harry crossed the yard to stand in the street. He made a production of removing his gloves, then pushing up his goggles and adjusting his glasses, and finally pulling off the respirator, which was a solid brownish-gray, like wood ash. He examined this for a moment, then tossed it onto a pile of other miscellaneous garbage. Only then did he raise his face to the woman who had come so far to meet him. "Hello, Ginny."

"Hello, Harry."

"This isn't the best time."

"You do seem to be busy."

Harry glanced back towards the house. "We leave for the day at five," he said. "Maybe after..."

"You're not getting away again," Ginny said flatly.

Harry flinched, then fumbled in his pockets until he produced a pen and a torn flier that proclaimed NO BULLDOZING. He scribbled an address on it and gave it to Ginny. "Here. This is where we're staying. I'll meet you there at six. No, six-thirty. We'll go downtown and get dinner or something."

"Or something." Ginny took the flier, folded it and tucked it into her pocket.

They stood facing each other for a moment longer, until someone from inside the house called out. Harry jumped a bit, and Ginny stepped back. "Six-thirty," she said again, and turned back the way she came, pausing to watch Harry snap on a fresh mask and disappear back into the house.

-\--\--\-

It was closer to six forty-five when Harry came out of the church in Jefferson Parish, with his hair dripping water. An afternoon storm had washed the worst of the humidity out of the air, and Ginny was content to wait in the small playground near the building, after charming one of the benches dry.

"Sorry," was the first thing Harry said.

"I was about to come in and look for you."

"There was a line—we've only got so many showers." Harry was wearing clean jeans and a button-down shirt, but he still had on the dusty boots he'd been wearing at the work site, and he still smelled much like the rest of the city: sweat and chlorine and, faintly, mold. "There's about sixty of us sleeping in the school gymnasium and we were the last crew back from our work site today, so there was a line."

"Why don't you stay in a hotel?" Ginny asked, even though she knew he was going to lie to her.

"It's not that bad, and the rest of the crew is here—the government camps are all packed—besides, some hotels haven't re-opened yet. They were as bad off as any other building here, you know."

Ginny nodded. "Where would you like to go?"

Harry shrugged. "Anywhere that's not catered by FEMA."

"Feemah?"

"Never mind." He glanced around, then pulled his wand out of his sleeve. "Where are you staying? The Vieux Rond?"

Ginny nodded. "The innkeeper recommended some Muggle restaurants, though."

They Apparated north and west of the French Quarter, between a gated cemetery and an elevated freeway. Ranks of abandoned flood cars had been gathered under the interstate to rust, and they both looked at these more closely than each other.

"I actually thought you might be in Pakistan by now," Ginny said. "You've been here for what, six months now?"

Harry shrugged. "Visa troubles. Besides, the job here's not done."

Ginny nodded; they passed a large hotel that proclaimed itself open despite its mangled awnings and cracked windows high above. Clusters of young people with the look and smell of volunteers about them sat on the sidewalk or underneath the interstate, eating out of foam cartons with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Ginny and Harry turned onto Canal.

"I actually thought I'd caught you in Thailand last winter," she said. "But by the time I got into the country, you'd already gone."

"I just crossed into Indonesia. When did you arrive?"

"First of February."

"We must've just missed each other, then."

"We seem to miss each other quite often."

"Haven't talked like this since...since New York, I suppose."

"Oh, longer than that," Ginny said, and Harry gave her an odd look, but kept walking.

Further down Canal Street, the signs of flooding and looting gave way to tourist traps and brightly-lit restaurants boasting new licenses from the health inspectors. Novelty t-shirts joking about the storm hung in ranks from shop doors, and broken strings of plastic beads still littered the ground from the parades a few weeks before. An old man rode by slowly on a bicycle, muttering ominously in French; the rest of the sparse foot traffic seemed to be a mix of chattering tourists and the volunteers from up the street, carrying pizzas and Chinese food back to their comrades under the interstate. Harry led the way into the French Quarter, and as they navigated the raucous crowds on Bourbon Street, he placed his hand on Ginny's waist, firm and light.

"Do you like it here?" Ginny asked him.

"We're doing a lot of good," Harry replied, and when they cut down the quieter St. Louis Street, he let her go.

They didn't speak of serious matters again for some time; Harry's knowledge of the quarter was shaky and many restaurants and cafes had already closed for the night. They eventually bought some grotesquely large sandwiches that the innkeeper had recommended to Ginny, and walked through the dark to Jackson Square to eat them. "We're really doing something good here," Harry said again, watching a woman read palms outside the cathedral. "D'you know how much it costs to get a house gutted commercially?"

"Ron and Hermione had a baby," Ginny said.

"Five thousand dollars, for one like we're working on now."

"She wasn't due until the middle of January, but she came in December."

"For a lot of people, that's more than they got from their insurance for the whole house."

"I talked them out of calling her Harriet."

"If people don't start returning, the city might just start bulldozing whole neighborhoods."

"You could've been a godfather."

Harry stared into the oily paper that had wrapped his sandwich for several minutes. "Who was?"

"Bill and Fleur."

"Oh."

"They asked Neville and Luna as well, but they went on expedition in the Andes." Ginny bit into the last wedge of her sandwich, scattering crumbs and bits of olive across the pavement.

Harry crumpled the paper into a tight ball in his fist. "We're really helping here," he said again. "We're really making a difference."

"I'm not finding you again."

He tore his eyes from the palm reader and looked at Ginny's face. "Am I that evasive?"

"I won't be looking."

"Oh."

"Oh?" She brushed the crumbs from her lap and stared through the shadows at him. "I wasn't expecting a speech, but you could at least say more than 'oh.'"

"Such as what?"

"If I knew, you wouldn't have to say it."

Harry rubbed his eyes and offered Ginny his hand. "Come on, let's get some coffee."

"Of course." Ginny crumpled her sandwich wrapper and placed it in Harry's outstretched palm.

They crossed the square to the bright lights of Café du Monde and claimed a table from the boistrous crowd. A waiter with a most unfortunate nose listened intently to their orders and walked away without writing anything down. Harry fidgeted with the napkin holder. "What do you want me to say?" he asked again. "I'm needed here."

"You're needed in a lot of places."

"We're doing real good, with what we're doing here. What I'm doing."

"Can't you just send a donation?"

"What, and just pretend it's somebody else's problem?"

"It _is_ somebody else's problem."

Harry shook his head. "You don't understand."

"No, I don't," Ginny said. "And I'm tired of trying."

The waiter came back and with excruciating care, he placed each of their cups on a saucer. When one of the mugs slopped over the side, the waiter removed it just as slowly and made certain to wipe everything up thoroughly before putting the cup back. The transfer from tray to tabletop was as precise and elegant as the motion of a glacier. Harry thanked the waiter anyway.

"I need to do this," he told her.

"You need to save people."

"No." He sipped his coffee. "Maybe. I don't know."

"You need to save Muggles in other countries."

"They need me."

"And we don't?"

"It's not the same."

"Exactly."

Harry shook his head. "There's nothing for me in England."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing to do. And don't say 'exactly.'" He sipped his coffee again and stared several tables down, at two delicate old women sharing a plate of beignets. "I need to be doing something. Anything. As long as I'm needed. Do you understand?"

Ginny stirred her cup lazily. "I've been trying," she said. "I've been trying to understand since I was sixteen. I told myself, 'Better to have loved and lost, so be grateful for what you had.' And then you vanished on us, and I thought, 'To hell with that, I love him enough to fight for him,' and I took off looking for you. Even when Ron and Hermione gave up and wrote you off, I looked for you."

"And now?" Harry asked. "Are you writing me off too?"

Ginny shook her head. "It's been almost eight years, Harry."

"I just need more time."

"I don't have any more to give you."

Harry shoved his cup away. "So you found me today just to tell me to go to hell?"

"No." Ginny folded her arms. "Though Merlin knows you deserve it."

"So what are you saying?"

"I just wanted to remind you that you can come home whenever you want," she said. "Just don't expect to find that we've all been waiting for you."

Harry slumped in his seat. "I'm sorry, Ginny," he said after a moment.

"So am I."

She waited for him to say something more, anything, but he didn't, so she rooted through her purse for a few dollars and left them on the table. Harry didn't move, not to say goodbye, not to walk her to her inn, not to chase after her and plead for time or love or understanding. Ginny didn't really expect him to. She walked away into the darkness; she left Harry sitting alone in the white beacon light of the busy café; and for the first time in a long time she didn't pause to look back.


End file.
